www.verticalmeasures.com

SEO: A CORE COMPONENT

Arnie Kuenn

President, Vertical Measures

@ArnieK #WACVBTechSummit

“8 Steps to Discovering & Creating Content Your Market Will Love”

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER…

• President of Vertical Measures –

A Search, Social & Content Marketing Agency

• Instructor for the Content Marketing Institute &

Online Marketing Institute

• Been an Internet marketer longer than Google

has existed.

Tweet:

Hey @Robert_Rose - @ArnieK says hello from

#WACVBTechSummit

“CONTENT MARKETING”

CONTENT MARKETING - THE TOP PRIORITY

WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?

• Content marketing is the art of providing relevant,

valuable content to your customers without selling or

interrupting them.

• Instead of pitching your products or services, you are

delivering information that makes your prospects

more informed before they buy.

• If you deliver consistent, ongoing valuable

information to your prospects, they ultimately reward

you with their business and loyalty.

THIS IS NOT A 30 DAY R.O.I.

BUT THE PAYOFFS CAN BE HUGE

SOME FACTS

of all consumers use search

prior to making a purchase

Source: GroupM

of searchers conduct non-

branded queries

of buyers click on organic

links vs the sponsored ads

SOME FALLACIES IN TODAY’S SEO THINKING

• Just measure rankings, that’s all that matters

• SEO is about ranking for “money” terms

• Adwords is the only keyword research tool you need

• Your site is the only place to do SEO

• Social sharing is fire and forget

• Link building no longer works

Courtesy of SEOMoz

SCALE OF ROI FROM SEO ACTIVITIES OVER TIME

SCALE OF ROI FROM SEO ACTIVITIES OVER TIME

Courtesy of SEOMoz

www.verticalmeasures.com

MANY SIGNALS INFLUENCE SEO

Star Ratings & Reviews

Author

Strength of Domain

Video SEOMoz

ACHIEVING SUCCESS IS CONTINUOUS,

PLANNED OUT PROCESS

THINK LIKE A PUBLISHER!

DEVELOP YOUR STRATEGY

• Strategy will evolve through the whole process

• Why are you creating the content you are creating?

• Who is your audience?

• Who are you? – Determine your “voice”

• What types of content will you create?

• How will you develop your content?

• When will you develop your content?

• What does success look like?

• What is different a year from now?

WHAT ARE WE SEARCHING FOR?

72% of the time I’m looking for answers & information. Will I find your business?

Do you know how many “answers” were provided just yesterday?

Over 4.7 billion!

LONG TAIL IS THE KEY!

START WITH RESEARCH

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/content/content-brainstorming-tools-for-2013/

KNOW YOUR KEYWORDS

MORE KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS

Google Keyword Suggest

Relate Searches

MORE KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS

YouTube Related Searches

More than 410

questions about “visit

the grand canyon”

(exact match).

More than 3,400

using broad match!

Long tail searches

are the key to

success!

LIST ALL CONTENT IDEAS IN A SPREADSHEET

PUT TOGETHER AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR

BENEFITS OF A BLOG

• Gives you a vehicle to post new content

• Allows for internal linking

• Keeps the search engines coming back – have 434% more indexed pages*

• Have 2X as many backlinks*

• Your site gets 55% more traffic*

• You have 79% more Twitter followers*

Source: *Hubspot

VIDEOS! – THEY ARE NOT THAT HARD

User Generated

Fun Interviews

Behind the scenes

INFOGRAPHICS ARE HOT RIGHT NOW

FREE GUIDES TO BUILD YOUR LIST

474 backlinks from 123 unique domains

- Lead generator

- Link attractor

- Long life span

BREAK!

HOW SEARCH WORKS

SEARCH OPTIMIZATION ELEMENTS

SEARCH RESULTS – WEB PAGE CONNECTION

Webpage File Name Webpage Title Tag

Meta Description

UNIVERSAL SEARCH RESULTS

70+% of all search results

ALL DIFFERENT – BUT CORE ELEMENTS

Web pages, News, Local, Images & Videos

1. Links pointing to your content

2. Titles & title tags (viewed in results)

3. Description meta tag (viewed in results)

4. Image alt text tags

5. H1 Tag (headline tag – only one!)

6. Page load times

7. Freshness of content

8. AuthorRank

HOW TO OPTIMIZE IMAGES

• Image files should be compressed as much as

reasonably possible to reduce file size. Smaller files

mean faster site load speeds. JPGs generally offer

the best balance of file size & quality.

• Use relevant keywords in image filenames,

separated by dashes (not underscores). Instead of

"DL000031.jpg", use something like "red-sports-

car.jpg"

• Make sure <img> tags have their "alt" and "title"

attributes defined with descriptive, concise, keyword-

related text. Do not stuff <img> attributes.

• Context matters. Google looks at content placed

around the image, like titles and captions, for context

about your image.

• Be sure to include images in your sitemap. The

XML tags provide additional opportunities to define

an image's title, caption, and even geographic

location.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE VIDEOS

• Specific, Compelling Title –Would you click on “Our

Company” or “V00023.mov?” neither will your audience.

• Tags –This is where you can help your video appear in

the “Suggested” or “Similar” videos section. Don’t be

dishonest, but if there are pop culture or social media

references in the video, tag them accordingly.

• Description - Say as much as you can in the first

sentence or two, because many video sites will hide the

bulk of your description. Include at least one link placed

at the start of the description – with http://.

• Video Quality / Resolution – Shoot, edit and export the

video in the highest quality available on the devices and

software you use. The online video audience is very

forgiving of skill level, but a low resolution video can

make it difficult to see what is going on.

• Thumbnail Image – If it’s an organically made video

(not planned), pick the most visually compelling of the

options they give you.

HOW TO APPEAR IN GOOGLE NEWS

• Need to submit your URL to Google first

• Article URLs must be:

–Unique

–Permanent

–Display a three-digit number

• To see if a site is already included in

Google News, type [ site:url.com ], into the

search box and click "Search News."

• http://support.google.com/news/publisher/

DO YOU HAVE A GOOGLE+ BUSINESS PAGE?

+1 BUTTON: OPPORTUNITY FOR BUSINESSES

THE TOP 5 LOCAL RANKING FACTORS 2012

1. A physical address in the city

2. Associate your business with proper categories.

3. Have an address close to the centroid

4. Complete and accurate NAP (Name, Address,

Phone) accuracy across the local ecosystem

5. High number of customer reviews on the new

Google +Local

CLAIM YOUR LOCAL PROFILES

PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT

SHARING NEW CONTENT CAN BE VERY SIMPLE

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU POST?

• The most common complaint from Facebook users is Newsfeed spam

• Posting just a few times per week produces 71% higher user

engagement

• Focus on quality, not quantity on Facebook.

• Only 50% of your posts should be about your content. Organizations

that share other content have a higher engagement rate.

PRESS RELEASES!

DISTRIBUTE OR REPURPOSE YOUR CONTENT

Source: CMI & MarketingProfs

VIDEO DISTRIBUTION

PRESENTATION DISTRIBUTION (PPT)

PINTEREST!

DON’T GET HUNG UP ON SOCIAL

BUILD LINKS TO YOUR CONTENT

• Identify low hanging fruit

– Internal links

– Fix 404, 500 and 302 errors

– Guest blog posts or articles

– Blog & forum participation

– Where you have relationships

– Local partners & listings

– Competitive research for similar content

• The best links:

– Are from trusted sites

– Have varied anchor text

– Are from many different, relevant websites

– Determined editorially

INTERNAL LINKS

• Internal links are what make up your website’s

navigation.

− Important for usability and visibility

− Internal links tell search engines what your site is about.

− Proper internal linking structure allows search engines to

spider and index more pages within your site.

• Make sure keywords in URL structure match

content on page.

• Keep footers clean and include a link to sitemap

• Use, but don’t abuse, internal text links within

content

MEASURE!

• Measure for successes…

and failures

• Check your rankings,

traffic, conversions and

other key metrics

• Focus on the strategies

that are providing the best

ROI and keep rolling out

the content

HOW ABOUT A RECAP?

CUSTOM TRAINING PROGRAM?

• 1 year content marketing training &

coaching program

• Beta – looking for 3 organizations to

work with us at highly discounted

pricing

BOOK RAFFLE TIME!

Tweet:

Content Marketing Book – @AccelerateBook is FREE on

Amazon– Today only! #WACVBTechSummit

Kindle Version

April 17, 2013

Only

FREE!

Contact: 888-476-1881 www.VerticalMeasures.com

More Traffic. More Leads. More Business.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!